Abstract
Despite major advances in the study of animal tool behaviour, researchers continue to debate how exactly certain behaviours are acquired. While specific mechanisms, such as genetic predispositions or action copying, are sometimes suspected to play a major role in behavioural acquisition, controlled experiments are required to provide conclusive evidence. In this opinion piece, we refer to classic ethological methodologies to emphasize the need for studying the relative contributions of different factors to the emergence of specific tool behaviours. We describe a methodology, consisting of a carefully staged series of baseline and social-learning conditions, that enables us to tease apart the roles of different mechanisms in the development of behavioural repertoires. Experiments employing our proposed methodology will not only advance our understanding of animal learning and culture, but as a result, will also help inform hypotheses about human cognitive, cultural and technological evolution. More generally, our conceptual framework is suitable for guiding the detailed investigation of other seemingly complex animal behaviours.
Highlights
The field of ethology continues to mature, how animals’ behavioural repertoires are formed and maintained remains under debate
An improved understanding of how tool behaviours develop in non-human species, and how they are passed across generations, has implications for a range of fields, including evolutionary anthropology, archaeology, and cultural and technological evolution
The experimental conditions we outline in this essay aim to determine if a target tool behaviour is acquired through individual processes, social learning, or specific copying social-learning mechanisms
Summary
The field of ethology continues to mature, how animals’ behavioural repertoires are formed and maintained remains under debate. The step-wise methodology presented here builds on pioneering work by the founders of ethology, especially Nikolaas Tinbergen [8,10] and Konrad Lorenz [6,11] These authors stressed the importance of studying the ontogenetic development of individual behaviours while carefully controlling for subjects’ previous experiences, for example, by testing naive hatchlings [7,10]. Of all the factors that may contribute to the emergence of animal tool behaviours, action copying (e.g. imitation) is often singled out as a major––and sometimes the only––driver, especially when discussing the tool repertoires of our closest living relatives, non-human great apes We describe the most robust methodology, in our view, for pursuing this goal
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